Free One Shot at Forever by Chris Ballard Page B

soaring. In three years of games and batting practice, Heneberry had never come within twenty feet of hitting one to the running track. Now he watched as the ball flew over it and rolled onto the football field. Only his slow feet kept him from a home run, and he coasted into third with a stand-up, three-run triple. It was the farthest he had ever, or would ever, hit a baseball.
    If Sweet had harbored any concerns about his team’s confidence or resilience, they were put to rest. By the end of the game, Macon had erased a six-run deficit to win 13–9.
    Wins like this didn’t exactly lead to baseball fever, but people in Macon were becoming increasingly curious about the Ironmen. With each victory a new headline appeared in the Herald & Review: “Macon Scores Fifth Shutout in Meridian”; “Another Shutout for Macon”; “Macon Clips Moweaqua.” New faces began to appear at games. There were uncles and brothers and curious townsfolk but also, on occasion and much to the boys’ delight, the occasional teenage girl. Sometimes there were up to thirty or forty fans, though the core still consisted of the baseball parents: Bob Shartzer, along with Dwight and Maxine Glan; the Arnolds; the Snitkers; Ernie Miller; and Jack Heneberry, always alone because his wife, Betty, became too nervous at games to watch her son.
    On occasion, even school board members stopped by. And the more the Ironmen won, the more ambivalence some felt about Sweet. Maconites may not have agreed with his political or religious beliefs, or liked his teaching curriculum, but baseball was a common language. He couldn’t be all bad if he had the boys playing so well.
    By mid-May, the Ironmen were 13–2 and Meridian Conference champions. Heading into the district title game they were also, amazingly, the favorites.
    Winning the conference was impressive for a school like Macon, but the feat was tempered by the level of competition. Most of the other schools in the area were also rural outposts, with enrollments between 200 and 450. Few had large budgets or extensive rosters, and most played on fields that, like Macon’s, bore only a passing resemblance to a proper baseball diamond. There was one exception though: Mt. Zion.
    Ten miles northeast of Macon, Mt. Zion was a thriving suburb of Decatur with a population of roughly twenty-five hundred. As commuters moved in, the town had continued to grow. As a result, over the years the rivalry between Macon and Mt. Zion had become increasingly lopsided. Mt. Zion’s team was deeper, its uniforms nicer, and its town more affluent. The team played on a handsome field with fences and combed dirt base paths. All this filtered down to the players, who acted, as Dale Otta remembers it, “Like they were higher class than us.”
    So on Friday, May 15, when Doug Tomlinson pitched seven innings and Shartzer knocked in two runs with a fifth inning double to power Macon past Mt. Zion 5–3 for the district title, it was a cathartic victory for the Ironmen. More important, it was also a sign that Macon wasn’t merely a good team in a weak conference but perhaps a good team, period. That the Mt. Zion players left the field cursing , unable to believe they’d lost to Macon again—twice in one season!—made the win all the sweeter.
    Within hours, the news spread around town, from Claire’s to the Country Manor and then, by telephone, up to Elwin and down to neighboring Moweaqua: The Ironmen were headed to the regionals .
    Shartzer was the first to say it, the following week during practice: “Why can’t we go all the way to state?”
    After all, as Shartzer pointed out, “It ain’t like there’s a rule against it.” And indeed, this was true. There were, however, years and years of precedent. Schools like Macon didn’t make it to state, and with good reason.
    In 1970, the Illinois high school baseball playoffs were one big